If you will now keep in mind that the guilds were connected in aninseparable manner with the whole social arrangement of the MiddleAges, you will see at once how the first machine, Arkwright'sspinning-jenny, embodied a complete revolution in those socialconditions.

For how could machine production be possible under the guild system,in which the number of journeymen and apprentices a master workmancould employ was determined by law in each locality; or how, underthe guild system, in which the different trades were distinguished bylaw from one another in the most exact manner, and each master couldcarry on only one of them--so that, for instance, the tailors and thenail-makers of Paris for centuries had lawsuits with the menders ofclothes and the locksmiths, in order to draw lines between theirrespective trades--how, under such a guild system, could production bepossible with a system of machines which requires the union of themost varied departments of work under the control of one and the samemanagement?

It had come to the point, then, that production itself had called intobeing, by its constant and gradual development, instruments ofproduction which must necessarily destroy the existing condition ofthings--instruments and methods of production which, under the guildsystem, could no longer find place and opportunity for development.

Thus considered, I call the first machine in itself a revolution; forit bore in its wheels and cogs, little as this could be seen onexternal observation, the germ of the new condition of things, basedupon free competition, which must necessarily develop from this germwith the power and irresistibility of life itself.

And so, if I am not greatly mistaken, it may be true today that thereexist various phenomena which imply a new condition that mustinevitably develop from them--phenomena which, at this time also,cannot be understood from external conditions; so that the authoritiesthemselves, while persecuting insignificant agitators, not onlyoverlook these phenomena, but even let them stand as necessaryaccompaniments of our civilization, hail them as the climax ofprosperity, and, on occasion, make appreciative and approving speechesin their honor.

After all these discussions you will now understand the true meaningof the famous pamphlet published by Abbe Sieyes in 1788--and so beforethe French Revolution--which was summed up in these words: _"Qu'est-ceque c'est que le tiers etat? rien! qu' est qu'il doit etre? Tout!"Tiers etat_, or third class, is what the middle class in France wascalled, because they formed, in contrast to the two privilegedclasses, the nobility and the clergy, a third class, which meant allthe people without privilege. This pamphlet brings together the twoquestions raised by Sieyes, and their answers: "What is the thirdclass? Nothing! What ought it to be? Everything." This is how Sieyesformulates these two questions and answers. But from all that has beensaid, the true meaning of these questions and answers would be moreclearly and correctly expressed as follows: "What is the third class_de facto_--in reality? Everything! But what is it _de jure_--legally?Nothing!"

What was to be done, then, was to bring the legal position of thethird class into harmony with its actual meaning; to clothe itsimportance, already existing in fact, with legal sanction andrecognition; and just this is the achievement and significance of thevictorious revolution which broke out in France in 1789 and exertedits transforming influence on the other countries of Europe.

This question arises here: What was this third class, or_bourgeoisie_, that through the French Revolution obtained victoryover the privileged classes and gained control of the State? Sincethis third class stood in contrast to the privileged classes ofsociety with legal vested rights, it considered itself at that time asequivalent to the whole people, and its cause as the cause of allhumanity. This explains the exalting and mighty enthusiasm which wasgeneral in that period. The rights of man were proclaimed; and itseemed as if, with the liberation and sovereignty of this third class,all legal privileges in society were ended, and as if every legallyprivileged distinction had been replaced by its principle of theuniversal liberty of man.

At that time, however, in the very beginning of the movement, inApril, 1789, on the occasion of the elections to a parliament whichwas summoned by the king under the condition that the third classshould this time send as many representatives as the nobility andclergy together, a newspaper of a character anything but revolutionarywrites as follows: "Who can tell us whether a despotism of thebourgeoisie will not follow the so-called aristocracy of the nobles?"

But such cries at that time were drowned in the general enthusiasm.

Nevertheless we must come back to that question, we must put thequestion definitely: Was the cause of the third class really the causeof all humanity; or did this third class, the _bourgeoisie_, bearwithin it a fourth class, from which it wished to distinguish itselfclearly, and subject it to its sovereignty?

I must now, if I do not wish to run the risk of subjecting mypresentation to great misunderstandings, explain my own conception ofthe word _bourgeoisie_, or upper _bourgeoisie_, as a term for apolitical party. The word _bourgeoisie_ may be translated into Germanby _Buergertum_ (body of citizens). In my opinion this is not what itmeans. We are all _Buerger_ (citizens)--the working man, the_Kleinbuerger_ (lower middle class), _Grossbuerger_ (upper middleclass), etc. But in the course of history the word _bourgeoisie_ hasacquired the significance of a definite political tendency, which Iwill now explain.[47]

The whole class of commoners outside the nobility was divided, when theFrench Revolution began, and is still divided in general, into twosubordinate classes--first, those who get their living chiefly orentirely from their labor, and are supported in this by very littlecapital, or none at all, which might give them the possibility ofactively engaging in production for the support of themselves and theirfamilies; to this class, accordingly, belong the laborers, the lowermiddle class, the artisans, and, in general, the peasants; second, thosewho control a large amount of property and capital, and on that basisengage in production or receive an income from it. These can be calledthe capitalists; but no capitalist is a _bourgeois_ merely because ofhis wealth.

No commoner has any objection to a nobleman's rejoicing privately overhis ancestry and his landed estates. But if the nobleman tries to makethese ancestors or these landed estates the condition of specialinfluence and privilege in the government, of control over publicpolicy, then the anger of the commoner rises against the nobleman andhe calls him a feudalist.

Conditions are the same with reference to the actual difference ofproperty within the class of commoners. If the capitalist rejoices inprivate over the great convenience and advantage which a large estateimplies for the holder, nothing is more simple, more moral, and morelawful.

To whatever extent the laborer and the poorer citizen--in a word, allclasses outside the capitalists--are entitled to demand from the Statethat its whole thought and effort be directed toward improving thelamentable and poverty-stricken material condition of the workingclasses and toward assuring to them, through whose hands all thewealth is produced of which our civilization boasts, to whose handsall products owe their being, without whom society as a whole couldnot exist another day, a more abundant and less uncertain revenue, andthus the possibility of intellectual culture, and, in time, anexistence really worthy of a human being--however much, I say, theworking classes are entitled to demand this from the State and toestablish this as its true object, the workingmen must and will neverforget that all property once lawfully acquired is completelyinviolable and legitimate.

But if the capitalist, not satisfied with the actual advantages oflarge property, tries to establish the possession of capital as acondition for participation in the control of the State and in thedetermination of public policy, then the capitalist becomes a_bourgeois_, then he makes the fact of possession the legal conditionof political control, then he characterizes himself as a newprivileged class which attempts to put the controlling stamp of itsprivileges upon all social institutions in as full a degree as thenobility in the Middle Ages did with the privilege of landholding.

The question therefore which we must raise with reference to theFrench Revolution and the period of history inaugurated by it, is thefollowing: Has the third class, which came into control through theFrench Revolution, looked upon itself as a _bourgeoisie_ in thissense, and has it attempted successfully to subject the people to itsprivileged political control?

The answer is given by the great facts of history, and this answer isdefinitely in the affirmative. In the very first constitution whichfollowed the French Revolution--the one of September 3, 1791--thedifference between _citoyen actif_ and _citoyen passif_--the "active"and "passive" citizen--is set forth. Only the active citizens receivedthe franchise, and the active citizen, according to this constitution,is no other than one who pays a direct tax of a definitely statedamount.

This tax was at that time very moderate. It was only the value ofthree days' work: but what was more important was that all those weredeclared passive citizens who were _serviteurs a gages_ (wageearners), a definition by which the working class was expresslyexcluded from the franchise. After all, in such questions theessential point is not the extent, but the principle.

This meant the introduction of a property qualification, theestablishment of a definite amount of property as the condition of thefranchise--this first and most important of all political rights--andin the determination of public policy.

All those who paid no direct tax at all, or less than this fixedamount, and those who were wage earners, were excluded from control ofthe State and were made a subject body. The ownership of capital hadbecome the condition for control over the State, as was nobility, orownership of land, in the Middle Ages.

This principle of property qualification remains (with the exceptionof a very short period during the French Republic of 1793, whichperished from its own indefiniteness and from the whole state ofsociety at the time, which I cannot here discuss further) the leadingprinciple of all constitutions which originated in the FrenchRevolution.

In fact, with the consistency which all principles have, this one wassoon forced to develop into a different quantitative scope. In theconstitution of 1814, according to the classified list promulgated byLouis XVIII., a direct tax of three hundred francs (eighty thalers)was established, in place of the value of three days' work, as acondition of the franchise. The July Revolution of 1830 broke out, andnevertheless, by the law of April 19, 1831, a direct tax of twohundred francs (about fifty-three thalers) was required as a conditionof the franchise.

What under Louis Philippe and Guizot was called the _pays legal_--thatis, the country as a legal entity--consisted of 200,000 men; for therewere not more than 200,000 electors in France who could meet theproperty requirement, and these exercised sovereignty over more than30,000,000 inhabitants. It is here to be noted that it makes nodifference whether the principle of property qualification, theexclusion of those without property from the franchise, appears, as inthe constitutions referred to, in direct and open form, or in a formin one way or another disguised. The effect is always the same.

So the second French Republic in 1850 could not possibly revoke thegeneral direct franchise, once proclaimed, which we shall laterconsider, but adopted the expedient of granting the franchise (law ofMay 31,1850) only to such citizens as had been domiciled in a placewithout interruption for at least three years. For, because workingmenin France are frequently compelled by conditions to change theirdomicile and to look for work in another commune, it was hoped, andwith good reason, that extremely large numbers of workingmen, whocould not bring proof of three years uninterrupted residence in thesame place, would be excluded from the franchise.

Here you have a property qualification in disguised form. It is stillworse in our country, since the promulgation of the three-classelection law, under which, with variations according to locality,three, ten, thirty, or more voters without property, of the thirdclass of electors, have only the same franchise as one singlecapitalist who belongs to the first class; so that, in fact, if theproportion were only one to ten, nine men out of every ten who had thefranchise in 1848 have lost it through the three-class election law of1849, and exercise it only in appearance.[48]

But this is only the average situation. In reality, conditions varygreatly in different localities, and they are often still moreunfavorable, most unfavorable in fact where the inequality of propertyis most developed; thus for instance, in Duesseldorf twenty-six votersof the third class have no more power than one rich man.

If we return from this discussion to our main thought, we have shown,and shall continue to show, in what manner, since the time when, throughthe French Revolution, the capitalist element obtained sovereignty, itsprinciple, the possession of capital, has now become the controllingprinciple of all social institutions; how the capitalist class,proceeding in just the same manner as the nobility in the Middle Ageswith land ownership, impresses now the controlling and exclusive stampof its particular principle, the possession of capital, upon allinstitutions of society. The parallel between the nobility and thecapitalist class is, in this respect, complete. We have already seenthis with regard to the most important fundamental point, theconstitution of the Empire. As in the Middle Ages landholding was theprevailing principle of representation in the German parliaments, sonow, by a direct or disguised property qualification, the amount of tax,and therefore, since this is determined by the capital of an individual,the holding of capital, is what, in the last instance, determines theright of election to legislative bodies and therefore of participationin the control of the State.

Just so in reference to all other institutions in which I havedemonstrated to you that land ownership was the controlling principlein the Middle Ages. I called your attention then to the exemption fromtaxation of the noble landholders of the Middle Ages, and told youthat every privileged ruling class tries to throw the burden for themaintenance of public welfare upon the oppressed propertyless class.Just so the capitalists. To be sure they cannot declare publicly thatthey wish to be exempt from taxation. Their expressed principle israther the rule that everybody shall be taxed in proportion to income;but, on the other hand, they attain, at least fairly well, the sameresult in disguised form by the distinction between direct andindirect taxes.

Direct taxes are those which, like the classified income tax, arecollected, and therefore are determined, according to the amount ofincome and capital. Indirect taxes, however, are those which are laidupon any necessity--for instance, salt, grain, beer, meat, fuel; or onthe necessity for legal protection--law costs, stamp taxes, etc., andwhich the individual very frequently pays in the price of thecommodity without knowing or perceiving that he is being taxed, thatthe tax increases the price.

Now no man, of course, who is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times asrich as another eats by any means twenty, fifty or a hundred times asmuch salt, or bread, or meat; or drinks fifty or a hundred times asmuch beer or wine; or has fifty or a hundred times as much need forheat, and therefore for fuel, as the workingman or the relatively poorman.

The result of this is that all indirect taxes, instead of fallingupon individuals according to the proportion of their capital andincome, are paid in the main by the propertyless classes, the poorerclasses of the nation. It is true that the capitalists did not inventindirect taxes--they were already in existence--but they were thefirst to develop them into a monstrous system and to throw upon themnearly the whole cost of government. To make this clear to you, I willsimply allude to the Prussian financial administration of 1855. (Showsby official statistics that out of a budget of 109,000,000 thalers allbut 12,800,000 were derived from indirect taxes.)

Indirect taxation is therefore the institution through which thecapitalistic class obtains the privilege of exemption for its capitaland lays the cost of the government upon the poorer classes ofsociety.

Observe, at the same time, Gentlemen, the peculiar contradiction andthe strange kind of justice of the procedure of laying the wholeexpense upon indirect taxation, and therefore upon the poor people,and of setting up as a test and a condition of the franchise, andtherefore of political control, the direct taxes, which contribute forthe total need of the State only the insignificant sum of twelvemillion out of one hundred and eight million.

I said further with reference to the nobility of the Middle Ages, thatthey held in contempt all activity and industry of the commoners. Thesituation is the same today. All kinds of work, to be sure, areequally esteemed today, and if anybody became a millionaire byrag-picking he would be sure of obtaining a highly esteemed positionin society.

But what social contempt falls upon those who, no matter at what theylabor or how hard they toil, have no capital to back them--that is amatter which you, Gentlemen, do not need to be told by me, but canfind often enough, unfortunately, in your daily life. Indeed, in manyrespects, the capitalist class asserts the supremacy of its specialprivilege with even stricter consistency than the nobility of theMiddle Ages did with its land ownership. The instruction of thepeople--I mean here of the adult people--was in the Middle Ages thework of the clergy. Since then the newspapers have assumed thisfunction; but through the securities a newspaper must give, and stillmore through the stamp tax which is laid in our country, as in Franceand elsewhere, on newspapers, a daily newspaper has become a veryexpensive institution, which cannot be established without veryconsiderable capital, with the result that, for this very reason, eventhe opportunity to mold public opinion, instruct it, and guide it hasbecome the privilege of the capitalist class.

Were this not the case, you would have much different and very muchbetter papers. It is interesting to see how early this attempt of the_bourgeoisie_ to make the press a privilege of capital appears, and inwhat frank and undisguised form. On July 24, 1789, a few days afterthe capture of the Bastille, during the first days after the middleclass obtained political supremacy, the representatives of the city ofParis passed a resolution by which they declared printers responsibleif they published pamphlets or sheets by writers _sans existenceconnue_ (without visible means of support). The newly won freedom ofthe press, then, was to exist only for writers who had visible meansof support. Property thus appears as the condition of the freedomof the press, indeed of the morality of the writer. Thestraightforwardness of the first days of citizen sovereignty onlyexpresses in a childishly frank manner what is today artfully obtainedby bonding and stamp taxes. With these main characteristic factscorresponding to our consideration of the Middle Ages we shall have tobe satisfied here.

What we have seen so far are two historical periods, each of whichstands for the controlling idea of a distinct class, which impressesits own principle upon all institutions of the time.

First, the idea of the nobility, or land ownership, which forms thecontrolling principle of the Middle Ages, and permeates all theinstitutions of that time.

This period closed with the French Revolution; though, of course,especially in Germany, where this revolution came about, not throughthe people, but in much slower and more complete reforms introduced bythe governments, numerous and important survivals of that firsthistorical period still exist, preventing to a large extent, eventoday, complete control by the capitalist class.

We observed, second, the period beginning with the French Revolutionat the end of the last century, which has capitalism as its principleand establishes this as the privilege which permeates all socialinstitutions and determines participation in the public policy. Thisperiod is also, little as external appearances indicate, essentiallyat an end.

On February 24, 1848, the first dawn of a new historical period becamevisible, for on that day in France--that land in whose mighty internalstruggles the victories as well as the defeats of liberty indicatevictories and defeats for all mankind--a revolution broke out whichplaced a workingman at the head of the provisional government, whichdeclared the principle of the State to be the improvement of the lotof the working classes, and proclaimed the universal and directfranchise, through which every citizen who had attained histwenty-first year, without regard to property, should receive an equalshare in the control of the State and the determination of publicpolicy. You see, Gentlemen, if the Revolution of 1789 was therevolution of the _tiers etat_ (the third class), this time it is thefourth class--which in 1789 was still undistinguished from the thirdclass and seemed to coincide with it--that now attempts to establishits own principle as the controlling one of society and to make itpervade all institutions.

But here, in the case of the supremacy of the fourth class, we findthe tremendous distinction that this class is the final andall-inclusive disinherited class of humanity, which can set up nofurther exclusive condition, either of legal or actual kind, neithernobility, land ownership, nor capital, which it might establish as anew privilege and carry through the institutions of society.Workingmen we all are, so far as we have the desire to make ourselvesuseful to human society in any way whatsoever.

This fourth class, in whose bosom therefore no possible germ of a neworder of privilege is concealed, is for that very reason synonymouswith the whole human race. Its class is, in truth, the class of allhumanity, its liberty is the liberty of humanity itself, itssovereignty is the sovereignty of all. Whoever hails the principle ofthe working class, in the sense in which I have developed it, as acontrolling principle of society, utters no cry which separates andmakes hostile to another the classes of society. He utters, rather, acry of reconciliation, a cry which includes all society, a cry for theleveling of all hostilities among the social strata, a cry of accord,in which all should join who do not wish privilege and the oppressionof the people by privileged classes, a cry of love, which, ever sinceit spoke for the first time from the heart of the people, will alwaysremain the true voice of the people, and, on account of its meaning,will still be a cry of love, even if it sounds the battle-cry of thepeople.

The principle of the working class as a controlling principle ofsociety we have still to consider from three points of view--first, asto the formal means of its realization; second, as to its moralsignificance; third, as to its political conception of public policy.

The formal means for carrying out this principle is the universal anddirect franchise already discussed--I say the universal and directfranchise, not merely the general franchise such as we had in 1848.The introduction in elections of two steps--of voters and ofelectors--is nothing but an artful means introduced purposely with theintention of thwarting, so far as possible, the will of the people inthe elections. To be sure, the universal and direct franchise willbe no magic wand, Gentlemen, which can protect you from temporarymistakes. We have seen in France, in the years 1848 and 1849, twounfavorable elections in succession, but the universal and directfranchise is the only means which automatically corrects, in course oftime, the mistakes and temporary wrong to which this may lead. It isthat legendary lance which itself heals the wounds it makes. In thecourse of time it is impossible, with universal and direct franchise,for chosen representatives not to be a completely faithful reflectionof the people who have elected them. The people, therefore, at everytime will consider universal and direct franchise as an indispensablepolitical weapon, and as the most fundamental and important of theirdemands.

Let us now glance at the moral bearing of this social principle whichwe are considering.

Perhaps the idea of the lowest classes of society as the controllingprinciple of society and of the State may appear very dangerous andimmoral, one which threatens to expose morality and culture to thedanger of being overrun by a "modern barbarism."

And it would be no wonder if this thought should appear so at present.For even public opinion--I have already indicated by what means,namely, through the newspapers--receives today its imprint from thecoining-die of capital and from the hands of the privileged capitalistclass.

Nevertheless this fear is only a prejudice; and it can be proved, onthe contrary, that this thought would represent the highest moralprogress and triumph which the world's history has shown. That view isa prejudice, I say, and it is the prejudice of the present time, whichis still controlled by privilege.

At another time--at the time of the first French Republic of 1793,which was necessarily forced to fail from its own lack ofclearness--the opposite prejudice prevailed. At that time it was heldas a dogma that all the upper classes were immoral and only thecommon people were good and moral. This view is due to Rousseau. Inthe new Declaration of Human Rights which the French Convention, thatpowerful constitutional assembly, published, it is even set forth in aspecial article--Article 19--which reads "_Toute institution, qui nesuppose le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse_."(Every institution which does not assume that the people is good andthe magistracy corruptible is faulty.) You see that is exactly theopposite of the confidence which is called for today, according towhich there is no greater crime than to doubt the good-will and thevirtue of the magistrates, while the people are considered onprinciple a sort of dangerous beast and centre of corruption.

At that time the opposite dogma even went so far that almost anybodywhose coat was in good repair appeared for that very reason corruptand suspicious, and virtue and purity and patriotic morality werebelieved to be found only in those who had no good coat. It was theperiod of _sans-culottism._

This point of view had really a foundation of truth, which, however,appears in a false and perverted form. Now there is nothing moredangerous than a principle which appears in false and perverted form;for, whatever attitude you take toward it, you are sure to fare badly.If you adopt this truth in its false, perverted form, then, at certaintimes, this will produce the most terrible devastation, as was thecase in the period of _sans-culottism._ If, on account of the falseform, you reject the whole proposition as false, you fare still worse,for you have rejected a truth, and, in the case which we areconsidering, a truth without whose recognition no wholesome progressis possible in modern political affairs.

There is therefore no other procedure possible than to overcome thefalse and perverted form of that proposition, and to try to establishclearly its true meaning.

Current public opinion is, as I said, disposed to stamp the wholeproposition as entirely false and as a declamation of the FrenchRevolution and of Rousseau. However, if this unreceptive attitudetoward Rousseau and the French Revolution were still possible, itwould be entirely impossible with reference to one of the greatestGerman philosophers (Fichte), the one hundredth anniversary of whosebirth this State will celebrate next month, one of the most powerfulthinkers of all nations and all times.

Fichte also declares expressly and literally that, with the risingsocial scale, a constantly increasing moral deterioration is found,and that "inferiority of character increases in proportion to thehigher social class."

The final reason of these propositions Fichte has nevertheless notdeveloped. He gives as the reason of this corruption the selfishnessof the upper classes; but then the question must immediately arisewhether selfishness is not also to be found in the lower classes, orwhy less in these classes. Now it must immediately appear as a strongcontradiction that less selfishness should prevail in the lowerclasses than in the upper, who have in large measure the advantage ofthem in the well-recognized moral elements, culture and education.

The real reason, and the explanation of this contradiction, whichappears at first so strong, is the following:

For a long time, as we have seen, the development of nations, thetendency of history, has been toward a constantly extending abolitionof the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their positionas higher and ruling classes. The wish for perpetuation of these, orpersonal interest, brings therefore every member of the upper classeswho has not once for all, by a wide outlook upon his whole personalexistence, raised himself above such considerations (and you willunderstand, Gentlemen, that these can form only very unusualexceptions) into a position which is from principle hostile to theprogress of the people, to the extension of education and science, tothe advance of culture, to all tendencies and victories of historicallife.

This opposition of the personal interest of the upper classes to theprogress of culture in the nation produces the great and inevitableimmorality of the upper classes. It is a life whose daily requirementsyou only need picture to yourselves in order to feel the deep declineof character to which it must lead. To be obliged daily to take anattitude of opposition to everything great and good, to bewail itssuccess, to rejoice at its failures, to check its further progress, tomake futile or to curse the progress which has already been made, islike a continual existence in the enemy's country; and this enemy isthe moral fellowship of the whole country in which you live, for whichall true morality urges support. It is a continual existence, I say,in an enemy's country. This enemy is your own people, who must belooked upon and treated as an enemy, and this hostility must, at leastin the long run, be craftily concealed and more or less artfullyveiled.

From this arises the necessity either of doing what is against thevoice of your own conscience, or of stifling this voice from the forceof custom in order not to be annoyed by it, or, finally, of neverknowing this voice, never knowing anything better or having anythingbetter than the religion of your own advantage.

This life, Gentlemen, therefore leads necessarily to a complete lackof appreciation and a contempt for all ideal efforts, to a pityingsmile when the great word "ideal" is even mentioned; to a deep lack ofappreciation and of sympathy for everything beautiful and great; to acomplete transformation of all moral elements in us into the onepassion of selfish opportunism and the pursuit of pleasure.

This conflict between personal interest and the cultural developmentof the nation is, fortunately, not to be found in the lower classes ofsociety.

In the lower classes, to be sure, there is, unfortunately, selfishnessenough, much more than there should be; but this selfishness, if itexists, is the fault of individuals and not the inevitable fault ofthe class.

Even a very slight instinct tells the members of the lower classesthat, so far as each one of them depends merely upon himself andmerely thinks of himself, he can hope for no considerable improvementof his situation; but so far as the lower classes of society aim atthe improvement of their condition as a class, so far does thispersonal interest, instead of opposing the course of history andtherefore of being condemned to the aforesaid immorality, coincide inits tendency completely with the development of the people as a whole,with the victory of the ideal, with the progress of culture, with thevital principle of history itself--which is nothing else than thedevelopment of liberty. Or, as we have already seen, their cause isthe cause of all humanity.

You are therefore in the fortunate position, Gentlemen, instead ofbeing compelled to be dead to the idea, of being destined rather,through your own personal interests, to a greater receptiveness forit. You are in the fortunate position that that which forms your owntrue personal interest coincides with the throbbing heart-beat ofhistory--with the active, vital principle of moral development. Youcan therefore devote yourself to historical development with personalpassion and be sure that the more fervent and consuming this passionis, the more moral is your position, in the true sense which I haveexplained to you.

These are the reasons why the control of the fourth class over theState must produce a fullness of morality and culture and knowledgesuch as never yet existed in history.

But still another reason points in the same direction, which again ismost intimately connected with all the considerations which we havestated and forms their keystone.

The fourth class has not only a different formal political principlefrom the capitalist class--namely, the universal direct franchise inplace of the property qualification of the capitalist class; it has,further, not only through its social position a different relation tomoral forces than the upper classes, but also, and partly inconsequence of this, a conception of the moral purpose of the Stateentirely different from that of the capitalist class. The moral ideaof the capitalist is this--that nothing whatsoever is to be guaranteedto any individual but the unimpeded exercise of his faculties.

If we were all equally strong, equally wise, equally educated, andequally rich, this idea might be regarded as a sufficient and a moralone; but since we are not so, and cannot be so, this thought is notsufficient, and therefore, in its consequences, leads necessarily to aserious immorality; for its result is that the stronger, abler, richerman exploits the weaker and becomes his master.

The moral idea of the working class, on the other hand, is that theunimpeded and free exercise of individual faculties by the individualis not sufficient, but that in a morally adjusted community there mustbe added to it solidarity of interests, mutual consideration, andmutual helpfulness in development.

In contrast to such a condition the capitalist class has thisconception of the moral purposes of the State--that it consistsexclusively and entirely in protecting the personal liberty of theindividual and his property.

This is a policeman's idea, Gentlemen--a policeman's idea because theState can think of itself only in the guise of a policeman whose wholeoffice consists in preventing robbery and burglary. Unfortunately thisconception is to be found, in consequence of imperfect thinking, notonly among acknowledged liberals, but, often enough, even among manysupposed to be democrats. If the capitalist class were to carry theirthought to its logical extreme they would have to admit that,according to their idea, if there were no thieves or robbers the Statewould be entirely unnecessary.

The fourth class conceives of the purpose of the State in a quitedifferent manner, and its conception of it is the true one.

History is a struggle with nature--that is, with misery, withignorance, with poverty, with weakness, and, accordingly, withrestrictions of all kinds to which we were subject when the human raceappeared in the beginning of history. A constantly advancing victoryover this weakness--that is the development of liberty which historyportrays.

In this struggle we should never have taken a step forward, nor shouldwe ever take another, if we had carried it on, or tried to carry iton, as individuals, each for himself alone.

It is the State which has the office of perfecting this development offreedom, and of the human race to freedom. The State is this unity ofindividuals in a moral composite--a unity which increases amillionfold the powers of all individuals who are included in thisunion, which multiplies a millionfold the powers which are at thecommand of them all as individuals.

The purpose of the State, then, is not to protect merely the personalliberty of the individual and the property which, according to theidea of the capitalist, he must have before he can participate in theState; the purpose of the State is, rather, through this union to putindividuals in a position to attain objects, to reach a condition ofexistence which they could never reach as individuals, to empower themto attain a standard of education, power, and liberty which would beutterly impossible for them, one and all, merely as individuals. Theobject of the State is, accordingly, to bring the human being topositive and progressive development--in a word, to shape humandestiny, i.e., the culture of which mankind is capable, into actualexistence. It is the training and development of the human race forfreedom.

Such is the real moral nature of the State--its true and higher task.This is so truly the case that for all time it has been carried outthrough the force of circumstances, by the State, even without itswill, even without its knowledge, even against the will of itsleaders.

But the working class, the lower classes of society in general, have,on account of the helpless position in which their members findthemselves as individuals, the sure instinct that just this must bethe function of the State--the aiding of the individual, by the unionof all, to such a development as would be unobtainable by him merelyas an individual.

The State then, brought under the control of the idea of the workingclass, would no longer be driven on, as all states have been up tothis time, unconsciously and often reluctantly, by the nature ofthings and the force of circumstances; but it would make this moralnature of the State its task, with the greatest clearness and completeconsciousness. It would accomplish with ready willingness and the mostcomplete consistency that which, up to this time, has been forced onlyin the dimmest outlines from the opposing will, and just for thisreason it would necessarily promote a nourishing of intellect, adevelopment of happiness, education, prosperity, and liberty, such aswould stand without example in the world's history, in comparison withwhich the most lauded conditions in earlier times would drop into apale shadow.

It is this which must be called the political idea of the workingclass, its conception of the purpose of the State, which, as you see,is just as different, and in a perfectly corresponding manner, fromthe conception of the purpose of the State in the capitalist class asthe principle of the working class--a share of all in thedetermination of public policy, or universal suffrage--is from thecorresponding principle of the capitalist class--the propertyqualification.

The line of thought here developed is therefore what must bepronounced the idea of the working class. It is that which I had inview when, at the beginning, I spoke of the connection between theparticular period of history in which we live and the idea of theworking class. It is this period, beginning with February, 1848, whichhas the task of bringing such a political idea to realization, and wemay congratulate ourselves that we have been born in a time which isdestined to see the accomplishment of this most glorious work ofhistory, and in which we have the privilege of lending a helping hand.

But for all who belong to the working class there follows from what Ihave said the duty of an entirely new attitude. Nothing is moreeffective in impressing upon a class a dignified and deeply moralstamp than the consciousness that it is destined to be the rulingclass; that it is called upon to elevate the principle of its class tothe principle of the whole historical period; to make its idea theleading truth of the whole of society, and so, in turn, to shapesociety into a reflection of its own character. The lofty historicalhonor of this destiny must lay hold upon all your thoughts. It is nolonger becoming to you to indulge in the vices of the oppressed, orthe idle distractions of the thoughtless, or even the harmlessfrivolity of the insignificant. You are the rock upon which the churchof the present is to be built.

The lofty moral earnestness of this thought should entirely fill yourmind, should fill your hearts and shape your whole life to be worthyof it and conformable to it. The moral earnestness of this thought,without ever leaving you, must stand for better thoughts in your shopduring your work, in your leisure hours, your walks, your meetings;and, even when you lie down to rest on your hard couch, it is thisthought which must fill and occupy your soul until it passes into therealm of dreams. The more exclusively you fill your minds with thismoral earnestness, the more undividedly you are influenced by itswarmth--of this you may be assured--the more you will hasten the timein which our present historical period has to accomplish its task, thesooner you will bring about the fulfilment of this work.

If, among those who listen to me today, there were even two or threein whom I have succeeded in kindling the moral warmth of this thought,with that fullness which I mean and which I have described to you, Ishould consider even that a great gain, and account myself richlyrewarded for my presentation.

Above all, your soul must be free from discouragement and doubt, towhich an insufficiently valid consideration of historical effortsmight easily lead. So, for instance, it is absolutely false that inFrance the Republic was overthrown by the _coup d'etat_ of December,1851.

What could not maintain itself in France, what really was destroyed atthat time, was not _the_ Republic but _that_ republic, which, as Ihave already shown you, abolished, by the law of May 30, 1850, theuniversal franchise, and introduced a disguised property qualificationfor the exclusion of the workingman. It was the capitalist republicwhich wished to put the stamp of the _bourgeoisie_--the domination ofcapital--upon the republican forms of the State; it was this whichgave the French usurper the possibility, under an apparent restorationof the universal franchise, to overthrow the Republic, which otherwisewould have found an invincible bulwark in the breast of the Frenchworkingman. So what in France could not maintain itself, and wasoverthrown, was not the Republic, but the _bourgeois_ republic; and,on really correct consideration, the fact is confirmed, even by thisexample, that the historical period which began with February, 1848,will no longer tolerate any State which, whether in monarchical or inrepublican form, tries to impress upon it, or maintain within it, thecontrolling political stamp of the third class of society.

From the lofty mountain tops of science the dawn of a new day is seenearlier than below in the turmoil of daily life.

Have you ever beheld a sunrise from the top of a high mountain? Apurple line colors blood-red the farthest horizon, announcing the newlight. Clouds and mists collect and oppose the morning red, veilingits beams for a moment; but no power on earth can prevail against theslow and majestic rising of the sun which, an hour later, visible toall the world, radiating light and warmth, stands bright in thefirmament. What an hour is, in the natural phenomena of every day, adecade or two is in the still more impressive spectacle of a sunrisein the world's history.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: The word _bourgeoisie_ is henceforth used throughout thediscussion to designate the political party now defined.--TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 48: Here the speaker quotes statistics showing that, on theaverage, throughout Prussia, a vote by a man of the first class has asmuch weight as seventeen votes by men of the third class.--TRANSLATOR.]

* * * * *

SCIENCE AND THE WORKINGMEN (1863)

[A speech delivered by Lassalle in his own defense before the CriminalCourt of Berlin on the charge of having incited to class hatred.]

I shall have to make my beginning with an appeal to your indulgence.My defense will go somewhat into detail. It will, on that account,necessarily be somewhat long. But I consider myself justified inpursuing this course, first, by the magnitude of the penalty withwhich I am threatened under Section 100 of the Criminal Code--the fullextent of this penalty amounting to no less than two years'imprisonment. In the second place, and more particularly, I considermy course justified by the fact that this trial by no means centresabout a man and the imposition of a penalty.

You will, therefore, permit me, without further preliminary, to carrythe discussion from the region of ordinary court-room routine to thathigher level on which it properly belongs.

The indictment brought against me is an evil and deplorable sign ofthe times. It not only offends the common law, but it is a notableviolation of the Constitution. This is the first count in the defensewhich I have to offer.

I. Article 20 of the Constitution reads: "Science and its teaching isfree."

What may be the meaning of this phrase in the Constitution, "is free,"unless it means that science and its teaching are not subject to theordinary provisions of the Criminal Code? Is this expression, "Scienceand its teaching is free," perhaps to be taken as meaning "free withinthe limits of the general provisions of the criminal code?" Butwithin these limits every expression of opinion is absolutelyfree--not only science and its teaching. So long as they live withinthe general specifications of the criminal code, every newspaperwriter and every market woman is quite free to write and say whateverthey choose. This liberty, which is conceded to all expressions ofopinion, need not and could not be proclaimed by a special article ofthe Constitution as a peculiar concession to "science and itsteaching."

To put such a construction upon this article of the Constitutionamounts to reading it out of the Constitution, to so interpreting itthat it has nothing to say,--which is in our time by no means aneglected method of quietly putting the Constitution out of the way.

Now, the first principle of legal interpretation is that a provisionof law must not be so interpreted as to make it superfluous or absurd,or to virtually expunge it. This, of course, applies with peculiarforce to an article of the Constitution. There can accordingly be nodoubt, Gentlemen, that precisely this was the intention of thisprovision of the Constitution; namely, that the prerogative was to beconceded to science that it should not lie under the limitations whichthe general criminal code imposes upon every-day, trivial expressionsof opinion.

It is easy to understand that the legislature of any country will seekto protect the institutions of the country. In the nature of the case,the laws forbid inciting the citizens of a country to disorderlyoutbreak against the constituted authority.

Indeed, if we accept certain current views of law and order we have nodifficulty in understanding that the law may consistently forbid allsuch appeal to the passions as is designed to foster contempt anddisregard of existing conventions, or to stir up sentiments of hatredand distrust in their populace through a direct appeal to the unstableemotions.

But what is in the eternal nature of things free, on which no limitsmust be imposed, the importance of which to the State itself isgreater than that of any single provision of law, to the free exerciseof which no provision of law can set bounds--that is the impulse toscientific investigation.

No situation and no institution is perfect. Such a thing may happen asthat an institution which we are accustomed to consider the mostunimpeachable and indispensable, may, in fact, be vicious in thehighest degree, and be most seriously in need of reform.

Will any one deny this whose view comprehends the changes whichhistory records since the days of the Hindus or the Egyptians? Or evenif he looks no further than the narrow space of the past one hundredyears?

The Egyptian fellah warms the hearth of his squalid mud hut with themummies of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the all-powerful builders of theeverlasting pyramids. Customs, conventions, codes, dynasties, states,nations come and go in incontinent succession. But, stronger thanthese, never disappearing, forever growing, from the earliestbeginnings of the Ionic philosophy, unfolding in an ever-increasingamplitude, outleaping all else, spreading from one nation and from onepeople to another, and handed down, with devout reverence, from age toage, there remains the stately growth of scientific knowledge.

And what is the source of all that unremitting progress, of all thatuninterruptedly, but insensibly, broadening amelioration which we seepeacefully accomplishing itself in the course of history, if it is notthis same scientific knowledge? And, this being so, science must haveits way without restraint; for science there is nothing fixed anddefinite, to which its process of chemical analysis may not beapplied, nothing sacred, no _noli me tangere_. Without free scientificinquiry, therefore, there is no outcome but stagnation, decline andbarbarism. And, while free scientific inquiry is the perennialfountain-head of all progress in human affairs, this inquiry and itsgradually extending sway over men's convictions, is at the same timethe only guarantee of a peaceable advance. Whoever stops up thisfountain, whoever attempts to prevent its flowing at any point, or torestrain its bearing upon any given situation, is not only guilty ofcutting off the sources of progress, but he is guilty of a breach ofthe public peace and of endangering the stability of the State. It isthrough the means of such scientific inquiry and its work ofpainstaking elaboration that the exigencies of a progressivelychanging situation are enabled gradually, and without harm, to havetheir effect upon men's thinking and upon human relations, and so topass into the life of society. Whoever obstructs scientific inquiryclamps down the safety valve of public opinion, and puts the State intrain for an explosion. He prohibits science from finding out themalady and its remedy, and he thereby substitutes the resultingconvulsions of the death struggle for a diagnosis and a judicioustreatment.

Unrestrained freedom of scientific teaching is, accordingly, not onlyan inalienable right of the individual, but, what is more to thepoint, it is, primarily and most particularly, a necessity of life tothe community; it involves the life of the State itself.

Therefore has society formulated the provision that "Science and itsteaching is free," without qualification, without condition, withoutlimits; and this proviso is incorporated into the Constitution, inorder to make it plain that it must remain inviolate even at the handsof the law-giver himself, that even he must not for a moment overlookor disregard it. And so it serves as pledge of the continual peaceabledevelopment of social life down to the remotest generations.

Does a question present itself at this point, Gentlemen? Am I settingup a new and unheard-of theory on this head?

Am I, possibly, misconstruing the wording of the Constitution in orderto extricate myself from an embarrassing criminal process?

On the contrary, nothing is easier than to prove to you from theevidences of history that this provision of the Constitution has neverbeen taken in any other sense; that for long centuries before the daysof the Constitution this theory has been current among us in usageand practice; that it is by ancient tradition a characteristic featureof the culture of all Germanic peoples.

In the days of Socrates, it was still possible to be indicted forhaving taught new gods (Greek: katnos theous), and Socrates drankthe hemlock under such an indictment.

In antiquity all this was natural enough. The genius of antiquity wasso utterly identified with the conditions of its political life, andreligion was so integral an element in the foundations of the ancientState, that the ancient mind was quite incapable of divesting itselfof these convictions, and so getting out of its integument. The spiritof antiquity must stand or fall with its particular politicalconventions, and, in the event, it fell with them.

Such being the spirit of those times, it follows that any scientificdoctrine which carried a denial of any element of the foundations ofthe State was in effect an attack upon the nation's life and mustnecessarily be dealt with as such.

All this changes when the ancient world passes away and the Germanicpeoples come upon the scene. These latter are peoples gifted with acapacity to change their integument. By virtue of that faculty fordevelopment that belongs to the guiding principle of their life, viz.:the principle of the subjective spirit,--by virtue of this, theselatter are possessed of a flexibility which enables them to livethrough the most widely varied metamorphoses. These peoples havepassed through many and extreme transformations, and, instead ofmeeting their death and dissolution in the process, they have by forceof it ever emerged on a higher plane of development and into a richerunfolding of life.[49]

The means by which these peoples are able to prepare the way for andto achieve these transmutations through which they constantly emergeto that fuller life, the rudiments of which are inborn in them, is theprinciple of an unrestrained freedom of scientific research andteaching.

Hence it comes that this instinct of free thought among these peoplesreaches expression very early, much earlier than the modern learnedworld commonly suspects. "We are mistakenly in the habit of thinkingof free scientific inquiry as a fruitage of modern times. But amongthese peoples that instinct is an ancient one which asserts that freeinquiry must be bound neither by the authority of a person nor by ahuman ordinance; that, on the contrary, it is a power in itself,resting immediately upon its own divine right, superior to andantedating all human institutions whatever.

"_Quasi lignum vitae_," says Pope Alexander IV. in a constitutionaddressed to the University of Paris in 1256, "_Quasi lignum vitae inParadiso Dei, et quasi lucerna fulgoris in Domo Domini, est in SanctaEcclesia Parisiensis Studii disciplina_." "As the tree of life in God'sParadise and the lamp of glory in the house of God, such in the HolyChurch is the place of the Parisian corporation of learning." Toappreciate the import of these words of the holy father, it should beborne in mind that in the Middle Ages all things whatever lived only byvirtue of a corporate existence, so that learning existed only asincorporated in a university.

It would be a serious mistake to believe that the universities of theMiddle Ages rested that prerogative of scientific censure--_censuradoctrinatis_--to which they laid claim in such a comprehensive way,upon these and other like papal or imperial and royal decrees ofestablishment. Petrus Alliacensis, a man whom the University of Pariselected as its _magnus magister_ in 1381, and who afterward wore thearchiepiscopal and also the cardinal's hat, tells us that not _ex jurehumano_, not from human legislation, but _ex jure divino_, from divinelaw, does science derive its competence to exercise the _censura_; andthe privileges and charters granted by popes, emperors and kings arenothing more than the acts of recognition of this prerogative ofscience that comes to it _ex jure divino_, or, as an alternativeexpression has it, _ex jure naturali_, by the law of nature. And inthis, Petrus Alliacensis is substantially borne out by all the laterscholastics.

Gentlemen, we are in the habit of giving ourselves airs and of lookingdown on the Middle Ages as a time of darkness and barbarism. But in sodoing we are frequently in the wrong, and in no respect are we morethoroughly in the wrong than in passing such an opinion upon theposition of science in the Middle Ages. Frequent and most solemn arethe cases in which recognition is made of the right of science toraise her voice without all regard to king and pope, and even againstking and pope.

We have recently witnessed a conflict between the government and thehouse of deputies as to the meeting of expenditures not granted by thehouse. An impression has been diligently spread abroad through thecountry that this is an unheard of piece of boldness and a subversiveassumption of power on the part of the house of deputies, and indeedthere have not been wanting deputies who have been astonished attheir own daring, and have taken some pride in it.

But, on the other hand, Gentlemen, in February, 1412, the Universityof Paris, which was in no way intrusted with an oversight or a controlof this country's fiscal affairs, took occasion to address a memorialto the King of France, Charles VI., as it said: "_pour la chosepublique du votre royaume_"--on the public concerns of the realm. Andin this memorial the university subjects the fiscal administration ofthe country, together with other branches of the administration, to adrastic criticism, and passes a verdict of unqualified condemnationupon it. This _remonstrance_ of the University of Paris rises to adegree of boldness, both in its demands and in its tone, that is quiteforeign to anything which our house of deputies has done or might beexpected to do. It points out that the revenues have not been expendedfor the purposes for which they were levied--"_on appert clairement,que les dictes finances ne sont point employees a choses dessusdictes_," etc.--and it closes this its review with the peremptorydemand: "_Item, et il fault savoir, ou est cette finance,"--"Now, wehave a right to know what has become of these funds." It describes theking's fiscal administration, including the highest officials, thefinance ministers, gouverneurs and treasurers, as a gang of lawlessmiscreants, a band of rogues conspiring together for the ruin of thecountry. It upbraids the king himself with having packed theparliament of Paris, and so having corrupted the administration ofjustice. It points out to him that his predecessors carried on thegovernment by means of much smaller revenues: "_au quel temps estoitle royaume bien gouverne, autrement que maintenant_"--"when thecountry was well governed, as is not the case today." The_remonstrance_ goes on to picture the burdens which rest upon thepoor, and to demand that these burdens be lightened by means of aforced loan levied upon the rich. And the _remonstrance_ closes withthe declaration that all this, which it has set forth is, in spite ofits length, but a very adequate presentation of the matter, in somuch that it would require several days to describe all themisgovernment the country suffered.

[Illustration: THE IRON FOUNDRY _From the Painting by Adolph vonMenzel_]

The university rests its right to make such a _remonstrance_ upon thisground alone,--that it is the spokesman of science, of which all menknow that it is without selfish interest, that there are neitherpublic offices nor emoluments in its keeping, and that it is notconcerned with these matters in any connection but that of theirinvestigation; but precisely for this reason, it is incumbent uponscience to speak out openly when the case demands it.

And the conclusion to which it comes is of no less serious import thanthis: It is the king's duty, without all delay (_sans quelquedilacion_) to dismiss all comptrollers (_gouverneurs)_ of finance fromoffice, without exception (_sans nul excepter_), to apprehend theirpersons and provisionally to sequestrate their goods, and, underpenalty of death and confiscation of property, to forbid allcommunication between the lower officials of the fisc and thesecomptrollers.

If you will read this voluminous _remonstrance_, Gentlemen--you mayfind it in the annals of that time by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (liv.I. c. 99, Tom. II. p. 307 _et seq_., ed. Douet d'Aroy)--you cannotavoid seeing that, had this memorial been promulgated in our time,e.g., by the University of Berlin, there is scarce an offenseenumerated in the code but would have been found in it by the publicprosecutor. Defamation and insult of officials in the execution oftheir office, contempt and abuse of the government's regulations andthe disposition taken by the officials, lese majeste, incitement ofthe subjects of the State to hatred and disrespect--and, indeed, Iknow not what all would be the offenses which our prosecutors wouldhave discovered in the document. It is less than a year since,according to the newspapers, a disciplinary inquiry was institutedwith respect to a memorial of a very different tenor, wherein one ofour universities declined the mandatory suggestions addressed to theuniversity by the ministers in regard to a given appointment. But,at that earlier day, in the dark ages, such was not the custom. On theother hand, in compliance with the university's demands, the treasurerof the crown, Audry Griffart, together with many others of the highofficers of finance, was taken into custody, while others avoided alike fate only by escaping into a church vested with the right ofasylum.

That was in 1412. But already eighty years before that date thereoccurred another, and perhaps even more significant case, which I maytouch upon more briefly. Pope John XXII. promulgated a newconstruction of the dogma of _visio beatifica_ and had it preached inthe churches. The University of Paris,--_nec pontificis reverentiaprohibuit_, says the report, _quominus veritati insistereat_,--"reverenceof the holy father prevented not the university from declaring thetruth"--, although the matter then in question was an article of thefaith and lay within a field within which the competence of the popecould not be doubted, still the university, on the 22d of January, 1332,put forth a decree in which this construction of the dogma was classedto be erroneous.

Philip VI. served this decree upon the pope, then resident at Avignon,with the declaration that, unless he recanted as the decree required,he would have him burned as a heretic. And the pope, in fact,recanted, although he was then on his deathbed. All of which you mayfind set forth in Bulas, _Historia Universitatis Parisiensis_. (Paris,1668, fol. Tom. IV. p. 375 _et seq_.)

These instances, which might be multiplied at will, may suffice toshow how unqualified was the freedom of science even in early days,constrained by no punitive limitation at the hands of pope or king;for, be it remembered, in the Middle Ages, science had, as I havebefore remarked, only a corporate existence in its bearers, theuniversities. So that the view for which I speak has practically beenaccepted as much as five hundred years back, even in Catholic timesand among Latin peoples.

But now comes Protestantism and creates its political structure,which it erects on precisely this broad principle of free thought andfree research. This principle has since that epoch been the foundationupon which our entire political life has rested. A protestant Statehas no other claim to existence than precisely this--cannot possiblyexist on other ground. When has there, since that time, been talk of apenal prosecution in Prussia on account of a scientific doctrine?

Christian Wolf, at Halle, popularized the Leibnizian philosophy, andit was then brought to the notice of the soldier-king, FrederickWilliam I., that, according to Wolf's teaching of preestablishedharmony, deserting soldiers did not desert by their own free will butby force of this peculiar divine arrangement of a preestablishedharmony;[50] wherefore this doctrine, being spread abroad among themilitary, could not but be very detrimental to the maintenance ofmilitary discipline. It is true, this soldier-king, whose regimentswere his State, was incensed at all this in the highest degree, andthat he forthwith, in November, 1723, issued an order-in-councilagainst Wolf, ordering him on penalty of the halter, to leave Prussianground within twice twenty-four hours--and Wolf was obliged to flee.But, inasmuch as the king's _lettres de cachet_ in that time permittedno appeal, they are also passed over in history as being devoid ofinterest or historic significance. It may be added that thesoldier-king had simply perpetrated a gratuitous outrage, and had notset the claims of law and right aside. He threatened to hang Wolf, andthis threat he could have carried out with the help of his soldiers.Even brute force is not devoid of dignity when it acts openly andabove-board. He did not insult his courts by asking them to condemnscientific teaching. It did not occur to him to disguise his act ofviolence under the forms of law.

Moreover, no sooner had Frederick the Great ascended the throne, 31stof May, 1740, than he, six days later, 6th of June, 1740, sent a noteto the Councillor of the Consistory, Reinbeck, directing the recall ofWolf. Even Frederick William I. had repented of his violence againstWolf and had in vain, in the most honorable terms, addressed lettersof recall to him. But Frederick the Great, while he too had use forsoldiers, was no soldier-king, but a statesman. The note to Reinbeckruns: "You are requested to use your best endeavor with respect tothis Wolf, who is a person that seeks and loves the truth, who is tobe held in high honor among all men, and I believe you will haveachieved a veritable conquest in the realm of truth if you persuadeWolf to return to us."

So it appears, then, that also this conflict serves only to add forceto the ancient principle that scientific research and the presentationof scientific truth is not to be bound by any limitations or by anyconsiderations of expediency, and must find its sole and allsufficient justification in itself alone. This principle herebyachieved a new lustre and gained the full authentication of the crown.

Even the existence of God was not shielded from the discussion ofscience. Science was allowed, as it is still allowed, to put forth itsproofs against his existence. The provisions of the new penal codebear only upon blasphemous utterances, such revilings of God as mayoffend those who believe otherwise, not upon the denial of hisexistence.

For many decades before the days of the Constitution theunquestioned liberty of science on Prussian ground had served theantagonists of Prussia as their supreme recourse, their chiefboast and proudest ornament. You will remember the extraordinarysensation created by the case of Bruno Bauer, the Privat Docenton the theological faculty at Bonn, whom it was attempted todeprive of his _licentia docendi_[51] at the ominous instance ofthe absolutist-pietistical Eichhorn ministry, because of hispeculiar doctrine concerning the gospel. This was the first caseduring the present century in which an assault has been attemptedupon the freedom of scientific teaching, and even this was aninfinitely less heinous one than the present. The faculties ofthe university were deeply stirred, and for months togetherofficial pronunciamentos swarmed about the town; men of thehighest standing, such as Marheinecke and others, declared thatprotestantism and enlightenment were threatened in their veryfoundations in case such usurpation, hitherto unheard of inPrussia, were allowed to take its course. And even suchexpressions of opinion as reached a conclusion subservient to theministerial view based their conclusion on the ground thatthe case in question concerned a _licentia docendi_ in thetheological faculty, with the fundamental principles of whichBauer's doctrines were incompatible. They took care expressly todeclare that had the question concerned a _licentia docendi_ inany one of the nontheological faculties, in a philosophicalfaculty, e.g., the decision must necessarily have been reversed.No one, not even Eichhorn himself, harbored the conceit that thisdoctrine and its teaching was to be dealt with by the criminalcourt. A teacher who spread abroad scientific teachingssubversive of theological doctrines was deprived of theopportunity to proclaim his teaching from a theological chair;but to call in the jailer to suppress him--to that depth ofsubservience to absolutism had no one at that time descended.Alas, that Eichhorn, the much berated, could not have lived tosee this day! With what admiration and with what gratificationwould he have looked upon his "constitutional" successors!

Even in the days of Eichhorn's pietistical absolutism, with its_ecclesia militans_ of obscurantism, there survived so much of a senseof decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the libertyof scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censurewhich in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. Intheir search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hitupon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk--books ofmore than twenty forms were exempt from censure. But however awkwardthe outcome, the aim of the provision is not to be denied.

These ancient traditions, with more than five hundred years ofprescriptive standing; this principle which prevailed by usage andacceptance among all modern peoples long before it was embodied inlegal form; this primordial deliverance of the spiritual life of theGermanic nations is the substantial fact which our modern society hasnow finally embodied in Article 20 of the Constitution and so hasconstituted a norm for the guidance of all later law-givers, in otherwords: "Science and its teaching is free."

It is free without qualification, without limits, without bolts andbars. Under established law everything has its limitations,--everypower, every function, every vested authority. The only thing whichremains without bounds or constituted limitation, whose privilege itis to over-spread and to overlie all established facts, in suchboundless and unhindered freedom as the sun and the air, is theirradiating force of theoretical research.

Scientific theory must be free even to the length of license.For, even if we could speak of a license in science and itsteaching,--which, by the way, is most seriously to bequestioned,--this is by all means a point at which an attempt to guardagainst abuse in one case would be liable in a million instances toput a check upon the blessings of rightful use. If any given measuresof state, or any given class institutions, were shielded fromscientific discussion, so that science might not teach that thearrangements in question are inadequate or detrimental, iniquitous ordestructive,--under these circumstances, what genius could there be ofsuch comprehensive reach, so far overtopping the spiritual level ofall his contemporaries and all succeeding generations, as even tosurmise the total extent of the loss which would thereby be sustained?What fruitful discoveries and developments, what growth of spiritualpower and insight would be stifled in the germ by one such rigidinterdict upon abuse; and what violent convulsions and what decaymight not come upon the State in consequence of it?

The question is also fairly to be asked: what is legitimate use andwhat is abuse of science? Where lies the line between them, and whodetermines it? This discretion would have to lie, not with a court oflaw, but with a court made up of the flower of scientific talent ofthe time, in all departments and branches of science.

However enlightened your honorable body may be--and indeed the moreenlightened the more unavoidably--this proposition must appeal to youas beyond question. What am I saying? The flower of the scientifictalent of the time? No; that would not answer. The scientific geniusof all subsequent time would have to be included; for how often doeshistory show us the pioneers of science in sheer contradiction withthe accepted body of scientific knowledge of their own time! It maytake fifty, and it may often take a hundred years of discussion inscientific matters to settle the question as to what is true andlegitimate and what is abuse.

In point of fact, there has hitherto been not an attempt, since theadoption of the constitution, to bring an indictment against any givenscientific teaching.

Gentlemen, since 1848--since 1830--we have here in Prussia had many asore and heavy burden to bear, and our shoulders are lame and tiredwith the bearing of them. But even under the Manteuffel-Westphalenadministration, and until today, we have been spared this oneindignity, of being called upon to see a scientific doctrine citedbefore the court.

The keenest attacks, attacks which, taken by themselves, might easilyhave been subject to criminal prosecution, have suffered noprosecution in any case where they have been embodied in a scientificwork and when promulgated in the form of a scientific doctrine.

I am myself in a position to testify on this point. It is not quitetwo years since I published a work in which, I believe, I havesucceeded in contributing something to the advancement of your ownscience, Gentlemen,--the science on which the administration ofjustice is based. The work of which I speak is my "System of AcquiredRights." _(System der erworbenen Rechte.)_ In this work I takeoccasion to say (Vol. I., p. 238): "Science, whose first duty is themost searching inquiry and concise thinking, can on this account in noway deprive itself of the right to formulate its conceptions with allthe definiteness and concision which the clearness of theseconceptions itself requires." And proceeding on this ground I go on,in the further discussion, to show that the agrarian legislation ofPrussia subsequent to 1850 is nothing else--to quote my own wordsliterally--than a robbery of the poor for the benefit of the wealthylanded aristocracy, illegal and perpetrated in violation of theperpetrators' own sense of equity.

How easy would it not have been, if the expressions had occurredelsewhere than in a scientific treatise, to find that they embodiedovert contempt of the institutions of the State, and incitement tohatred and disregard of the regulations of the government. But theyoccurred in a scientific treatise--they were the outcome of apainstaking scientific inquiry,--therefore they passed withoutindictment.

But that was two years ago.

In return for the accusation which has been brought against me, I, inmy turn, retort with the accusation that my accusers have this daybrought upon Prussia the disgrace that now for the first time sincethe State came into existence scientific teaching is prosecuted beforea criminal court. For what can the public prosecutor say to myaccusation, since he concedes the substance of my claims, since he iscompelled to acknowledge that science and its teaching is free, andtherefore free from all penal restraint? Will he contend, perhaps,that I do not represent science? Or will he, possibly, deny that thework with which this indictment is concerned is a scientific work?The prosecutor seems to feel himself hampered by the fact that he hashere to do with a scientific production, for he begins his indictmentwith the sentence: "While the accused has assumed an appearance ofscientific inquiry, his discussion at all points is of a practicalbearing." The appearance of scientific inquiry? And why is it theappearance only? I call upon the prosecutor to show why only theappearance of scientific inquiry is to be imputed to this scientificpublication. I believe that in a question as to what is scientific andwhat not, I am more competent to speak than the public prosecutor.

In various and difficult fields of science I have published voluminousworks; I have spared no pains and no midnight vigils in the endeavorto widen the scope of science itself, and, I believe, I can in thismatter say with Horace: _Militavi non sine gloria_.[52] But I declareto you: Never, not in the most voluminous of my works, have I writtena line that was more carefully thought out in strict conformity toscientific truth than this production is from its first page to itslast. And I assert further that not only is this brochure a scientificwork, as so many another may be that presents in combination resultsalready known, but that it is in many respects a scientificachievement, a development of new scientific conceptions.

What is the criterion by which the scientific standing of a book is tobe judged? None else, of course, than its contents.

I beg you, therefore, to take a look at the contents of this pamphlet.Its content is nothing else than a philosophy of history, condensed inthe compass of forty-four pages, beginning with the Middle Ages andcoming down to the present. It is a development of that objectiveunfolding of rational thought which has lain at the root of Europeanhistory for more than a thousand years past; it is an exposition of thatinner soul of things resident in the process of history that manifestsitself in the apparently opaque, empirical sequence of events and whichhas produced this historical sequence out of its own moving, creativeforce. It is, in spite of the brief compass of the pamphlet, thestrictly developed proof that history is nothing else than theself-accomplishing, by inner necessity increasingly progressiveunfolding of reason and of freedom, achieving itself under the mask ofapparently mere external and material relations.

In the brief compass of this pamphlet, I pass three great periods ofthe world's history in review before the reader; and for each one Ipoint out that it proceeds on a single comprehensive idea, whichcontrols all the various, apparently unrelated, fields of developmentand all the different and widely-scattered phenomena that fall withinthe period in question; and I show that each of these periods is butthe necessary forerunner and preparation for the succeeding period,and that each succeeding period is the peculiar and imminentlynecessary continuation, the consequence and unavoidable consummationof the preceding period, and that these together, consequently,constitute a comprehensive and logically inseparable whole.

First comes the period of feudalism. I here show that feudalism, inall its variations, rests on the one principle of control of landedproperty, and I also show how at that time, owing to the fact thatsociety's productive work to a preponderating extent consisted inagriculture, landed property necessarily was the controlling factor,that is to say, the feature conditioning all political and socialpower and standing.

And I beg you, Gentlemen, to take note with what a strict scientificobjectivity of treatment, how free from all propagandist bias, Iproceed with the discussion. If there is any one datum which lendsitself to the purposes of that propagandist bias which the publicprosecutor claims to find in this pamphlet--namely the incitement ofthe indigent classes to hatred of the wealthy--it is the peasant wars.If there is any one fact which has hitherto been accepted, inscientific and in popular opinion alike, and more particularly amongthe unpropertied classes, with, the fondest remembrance, as a nationalmovement iniquitously put down by the strong hand of violence, it isthe peasant wars.

Now, unmoved by this predilection and this shimmer of sentiment, withwhich the science and the popular sense have united in investing thepeasant wars, I go on to divest these wars of this deceptiveappearance and show them up in their true light,--that they were atbottom a reactionary movement, which, fortunately for the cause ofliberty, was of necessity doomed to failure.

Further: If there exists in Germany an institution which, as aquestion of our own times, I abominate with all my heart as the sourceof our national decay, our shame and our impotence, it is theinstitution of the territorial State.

Now, the pamphlet in question is so strictly scientific and objectivein its method, so far removed from all personal bias, that I thereingo on to show that the institution of the territorial State was, inits time, historically a legitimate and revolutionary feature; that itwas an ideal advance, in that it embodied and developed the concept ofa State independent of relations of ownership; whereas the peasantwars sought to place the State, and all political power and standing,on the basis of property.

I then, further, go on to show how the period of feudalism issucceeded by a second world-historic period. I show how, while thepeasant wars were revolutionary only in their own delusion, therebegins almost simultaneously with them a real revolution, namely, thataccumulation of capitalistic wealth which arose through thedevelopment of industry. This wrought a thoroughgoing change in thewhole situation,--a change which reached its final act, achieved itslegal acceptance, in the French Revolution of 1789, but which had inpoint of fact for three hundred years been imperceptibly advancingtoward its consummation.

I show in detail, which I need not here expound or recapitulate, whatare the economic factors that were destined to push landed propertyinto the remotest back-ground and leave it relatively powerless,by making the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearerof modern social wealth. All this took place by force of the newindustrial activity the great lever and the bearer of methods whichthey brought in.

I show how this capitalized wealth, which has come forward as anoutcome of this industrial development and has grown to be thedominant factor in this second period, must in its turn attain theposition of prerogative as the recognized qualification of politicalcompetence, as the condition of a voice in the councils and policy ofthe State; just as was at an earlier time the case with landedproperty in relation to the public law of feudalism. I show how,directly and indirectly in the control of opinion, in the requirementof bonds and stamp duties, in the public press, in the growth ofindividual taxation, etc., capitalized wealth, as a basis ofparticipation in public affairs, must work out its inherent tendencywith the same thoroughness and the same historical necessity as landedproperty had done in its time.

And this second period, which has completed its three hundred andfifty years, as I further go on to show, is now essentially concluded.With the French Revolution of 1848 comes the dawning of a new, a thirdhistorical period. By its proclamation of universal and equalsuffrage, regardless of property qualifications, this third periodassigns to each and every one an equal share in the sovereignty, inthe guidance of public affairs and public policy. And so it installsfree labor as the dominating principle of social life, conditioned byneither the possession of land nor of capital.

I then develop the difference in point of ethical principles betweenthe _bourgeoisie_ and the laboring class, as well as the resultingdifference in the political ideals of the two classes. Thearistocratic principle assigned the individual his status on the basisof descent and social rank, whereas the principal for which the_bourgeoisie_ stands contends that all such legal restriction isiniquitous, and that the individual must be counted simply as such,with no prerogative beyond guaranteeing him the unhinderedopportunity to make the most of his capacities as an individual. Now,I claim, if we all were by native gift equally wealthy, equallycapable, equally well educated, then this principle of equalopportunity would be adequate to the purpose. But since such equalitydoes not prevail, and indeed cannot come to pass, and since we do notcome into the world simply as undifferentiated individuals, butendowed in varying degree with wealth and capacities, which in turnresult in differences of education; therefore, this principle is notan adequate principle. For, if under these actual circumstances,nothing were guaranteed beyond the unhindered opportunity of theindividual to make the most of himself, the consequence must be anexploitation of the weaker by the stronger. The principle for whichthe working classes stand is this, that free opportunity alone willnot suffice, but that to this, for the purposes of any morallydefensible organization of society, there must be added the furtherprinciple of a solidarity of interests, a community and mutuality indevelopment.

From this difference between the two classes, in point of ethicalprinciple, follows, as a matter of course, the difference in politicalideals.

The _bourgeoisie_ has elaborated the principle that the end of theState is to protect the personal liberty of the individual and hisproperty. This is the doctrine put forth by the scientific spokesmenof the _bourgeoisie_. This is the doctrine of its political leaders,of liberalism. But this theory is in a high degree inadequate,unscientific, and at variance with the essential nature of the State.

The course of history is a struggle against nature, against need,ignorance and impotence, and, therefore, against bondage of every kindin which we were held under the state of nature at the beginning ofhistory. The progressive overcoming of this impotence,--this is theevolution of liberty, whereof history is an account. In this strugglewe should never have made one step in advance, and we should nevertake a further step, if we had gone into the struggle singly, each forhimself.

Now the State is precisely this contemplated unity and cooeperation ofindividuals in a moral whole, whose function it is to carry on thisstruggle, a combination which multiplies a million fold the force ofall the individuals comprised in it, which heightens a million foldthe powers which each individual singly would be able to exert.

The end of the State, therefore, is not simply to secure to eachindividual that personal freedom and that property with which thebourgeois principle assumes that the individual enters the stateorganization at the outset, but which in point of fact are firstafforded him in and by the State. On the contrary, the end of theState can be no other than to accomplish that which, in the nature ofthings, is and always has been the function of the State,--in setterms: by combining individuals into a state organization to enablethem to achieve such ends and to attain such a level of existence asthey could not achieve as isolated individuals.

The ultimate and intrinsic end of the State, therefore, is to furtherthe positive unfolding, the progressive development of human life. Inother words, its function is to work out in actual achievement thetrue end of man; that is to say, the full degree of culture of whichhuman nature is capable. It is the education and evolution of mankindinto freedom.

As a matter of fact, even the older culture, which has become theinestimable foundation of the Germanic genius, makes for such aconception of the State. I may cite the words of the great leader ofour science, August Boeckh: "The concept of the State must," accordingto him, "necessarily be so broadened as to make the State thecontrivance whereby all human virtue is to be realized to the full."

But this fully developed conception of the State is, above all andessentially, a conception that is in a peculiar sense to be ascribedto the working classes. Others may conceive this conception of theState by force of insight and education, but to the workingclasses it is, by virtue of the helpless condition of their numbers,given as a matter of instinct; it is forced home upon them by materialand economic facts.

Their economic situation necessarily breeds in these classes aninstinctive sense that the function of the State is and must be thatof helping the individual, through the combined efforts of all, toreach a development such as the individual in isolation is incapableof attaining.

In point of fact, however, this ethical conception of the State doesnot set up any concept that has not already previously been the realmotor principle in the State. On the contrary, it is plain from whathas already been said, that this, in an unconscious way, has been theessential nature of the State from the beginning. This essentialcharacter of the State has always in some measure asserted itselfthrough the logical constraint of the course of events, even when suchan aim has been absent from the conscious purposes of the State, evenwhen opposed to the will of those in whose hands the power of controlhad rested.

In setting up this conception of the working classes as the dominantconcept of the State, therefore, we do nothing more than articularlyformulate what has all along, but obscurely, been the organic natureof the State, and bring it into the foreground as the consciouslyavowed end of society.

Herein lies the comprehensive unity and continuity of all humandevelopment, that nothing drops into the course of development fromthe outside. It is only that that is brought clearly intoconsciousness, and worked out on the ground of free choice, which hasin substance all along constituted the obscurely and unconsciouslyeffective organic nature of things.

With the French Revolution of 1848 this clearer consciousness has madeits entry upon the scene and has been proclaimed. In the first place,this outcome was symbolically represented in that a workman was made amember of the provisional government; and, further, there wasproclaimed universal, equal and direct suffrage, which is in point ofmethod the means whereby this conception of the State is to berealized. February, 1848, therefore, marks the dawning of thehistorical period in which the ethical principle of the workingclasses is consciously accepted as the guiding principle of society.

We have reason to congratulate ourselves upon living in an epochconsecrated to the achievement of this exalted end. But, above all, itis to be said, since it is the destined course of this historicalperiod to make their conception the guiding principle of society, itbehooves the working classes to conduct themselves with all moralearnestness, sobriety and studious deliberation.

Such, expressed in the briefest terms, is the content and the courseof argument of the disquisition in question.

What I have sought to accomplish in that argument is nothing else thanto explain to my auditors the intrinsic philosophical content of thehistorical development, to initiate them into this most difficult ofall the sciences, to bring home to them the fact that history is alogical whole which unfolds step by step under the guidance ofinexorable laws.

One who gives himself up to work of this kind is entitled to addressyour public prosecutor in the words of Archimedes, when, at thesacking of Syracuse, he was set upon, sword in hand, by the savagesoldiery while drawing and studying his mathematical figures in thesand: "_Noli turbare circulos meos_."[53]

To enable me to write this pamphlet, five different sciences, and morethan that, have had to be brought into cooeperation and had to bemastered: History in the narrower sense of the term, Jurisprudence andthe History of Law, Political Economy, Statistics, Finance, and, lastand most difficult of the sciences, the science of thought, orPhilosophy.

What a paragon of scientific erudition must the public prosecutor be,in whose eyes all this is not sufficient to lend a publication theattribute of scientific quality.

But the indictment itself, when it is more closely examined, is seento assign the ground on which this work is held to lack the requisitescientific character. The indictment says: "While the defendant,Lassalle, has been at pains to give himself the appearance ofscientific method in this address, still the address is after all of athoroughly practical bearing."

So it appears, then, that, according to the public prosecutor, theaddress is not scientific because it is claimed to have a practicalbearing. The test of scientific adequacy, according to the publicprosecutor, is the absence of practical bearing. I may fairly bepermitted to ask the public prosecutor--and it is a Schelling whosesignature this indictment bears--where he has learned all this. Fromhis father? Assuredly not. Schelling the elder assigns philosophy noless serious a task than that of transforming the entire culturalepoch. "It is conceived to be too much," says he in formulating ananticipated objection, "to expect that philosophy shall rehabilitatethe times." To this his answer is: "But when _I_ claim to see inphilosophy a means whereby to remedy the confusion of the times, Ihave, of course, in mind not an impotent philosophy, not simply aproduct of workman-like dexterity, but a forceful philosophy which canface the facts of life, philosophy which, far from feeling itselfimpotent before the stupendous realities of life, far from confiningitself to the dreary business of simple negation and destruction,draws its force from reality and, therefore, reaches effective andenduring results."

The public prosecutor, with his brand-new and highly extraordinarydiscovery, will scarcely find much comfort with the other men of thescience.

In his Address to the German People, Fichte tells us: "What, then, isthe bearing of our endeavors even in the most recondite of thesciences? Grant that the proximate end of these endeavors is that ofpropagating these sciences from generation to generation, and soconserving them; but why are they to be conserved? Manifestly only inorder that they in the fulness of time shall serve to shape human lifeand the entire scheme of human institutions. This is the ulterior end.Remotely, therefore, even though it may be in distant ages, everyendeavor of science serves to advance the ends of the State."

Now, Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Court, if I were to spend furtherspeech in the refutation of this discovery of the publicprosecutor--that impracticability is the test of science--I should beinsulting your intelligence.

In the pamphlet in question my aim was the thoroughly practical one ofbringing my readers to a comprehension of the times in which theylive, and thereby permanently to affect their conduct throughout thecourse of their life and in whatever direction their activity may lie.

Now, then, what characteristic of scientific work is it which thepublic prosecutor finds wanting in all this? Is it, perhaps, that itfalls short in respect of bulk? Is it the circumstance that this workis only a pamphlet of less than fifty pages, instead of comprisingthree folio volumes? But when was it decided that the bulk of a work,instead of its contents, is to be accepted as a test of its scientificcharacter? Is the public prosecutor prepared, for instance, to denythat the papers presented by the members of the Royal Academy at theirsessions are scientific productions? But nearly all of these areshorter than this of mine.

During the past year, as speaker for the Philosophical Society at thecelebration of Fichte's birthday, it was my fortune to present anaddress in which I dealt intimately with the history of Germanmetaphysics. That address fills only thirty-five pages as against theforty-four pages of the present pamphlet. Is the public prosecutorprepared to deny the character of science to that address because ofits brevity?

Who will not, on the contrary, appreciate that the very brevityimposed by circumstances makes the scientific inquiry contained inthis work all the more difficult and the more considerable? I wascompelled to condense my exposition within the compass of a two-hours'address, a pamphlet of forty-four pages, at the same time that I wasobliged to conform my presentation of the matter to an audience onwhose part I could assume no acquaintance with scientific methods andresults. To overcome obstacles of this kind and, at the same time, notto fall short in point of profound scientific analysis, as was thecase in the present instance, requires a degree of precision, closeapplication and clarity of thought far in excess of what is demandedin these respects in the common run of more voluminous scientificworks.

I return, therefore, again to the question: What is the requirement ofscience with respect to which this address falls short? Is it,perhaps, that it offends the canons of science in respect of the placein which it was held?

This, in fact, touches the substantial core of this indictment, and,at the same time, the sorest spot of the whole. This address mightwell--so runs the prosecutor's reflection--have been deliveredwherever you like--from the professor's chair or from the rostrum ofthe singing school, before the so-called elite of the educated people;but that it was actually delivered before the actual people, that itwas held before workingmen and addressed to workingmen, that factdeprives it of all standing as a scientific work and makes it acriminal offense,--_crimen novum atque inauditum_.[54]

I might, of course, content myself with the answer that the substanceof an address, and therefore its scientific character, is in no wayaffected by the place in which it happens to have been delivered,whether it is in the Academy of Science, before the cream of thelearned world, or in a hall in the suburbs before an audience ofmachinists.

But I owe you, Gentlemen, a somewhat fuller answer. To begin with, letme express my amazement at the fact that here in Berlin, in the citywhere Fichte delivered his immortal popular lectures on philosophy, hisspeeches on the fundamental features of the modern epoch and hisspeeches on the German nation before the general public, that in thisplace and day it should occur to any one to fancy that the place inwhich an address is delivered has anything whatever to do with itsscientific character.

The great destiny of our age is precisely this--which the dark ageshad been unable to conceive, much less to achieve--the disseminationof scientific knowledge among the body of the people. The difficultiesof this task may be serious enough, and we may magnify them as welike,--still, our endeavors are ready to wrestle with them and ournightly vigils will be given to overcoming them.

In the general decay which, as all those who know the profounderrealities of history appreciate, has overtaken European history in allits bearings, there are but two things that have retained their vigorand their propagating force in the midst of all that shriveling blightof self-seeking that pervades European life. These two things arescience and the people, science and the workingman. And the union ofthese two is alone capable of invigorating European culture with a newlife.

The union of these two polar opposites of modern society, science andthe workingman,--when these two join forces they will crush allobstacles to cultural advance with an iron hand, and it is to thisunion that I have resolved to devote my life so long as there isbreath in my body.

But, Gentlemen, is this view something new and entirely unheard-of inthe realm of science? Let us see what Fichte himself, in his Addressesto the German People, has to say to the cultured classes, to whom headdresses these words: "It is particularly to the cultured classes ofGermany that I wish to direct my remarks in the present address, forit is to these classes I hope in the first place to make myselfintelligible. And I implore these classes, then, as the first step tobe taken, to take the initiative in the work of reconstruction, andso, on the one hand, atone for their past deeds, and, on the otherhand, earn the right to continued life in the future.

[Illustration: FLAX BARN IN LAREN _From the Painting by MaxLiebermann_]

It will appear in the course of this address that hitherto all theadvance in the German nation has originated with the commonpeople, and that hitherto all the great national interests have, inthe first instance, been the affair of the people, have been taken inhand and pushed forward by the body of the people; so that today forthe first time does it happen that the initiative in the culturaladvance of the nation is committed to the hands of the culturedclasses, and if they will but accept the commission it will be thefirst time when such has been the case. It will presently appear thatit is quite impossible for these classes to determine how long thematter will yet rest in their discretion, how long the choice will yetbe open to them whether to take the initiative in this matter or not,for the whole matter is nearly ripe to be taken in hand by the people,and it will be carried out by men sprung from the body of the people,who will presently be able to help themselves without assistance fromus."

Fichte, then, knew and proclaimed this fact, that the realization ofall the great national interests in the past has been the work of thecommon people and has never been carried out at the hands of thecultured classes. That, in spite of this knowledge, he turned to thecultured classes is due, as he himself says, to the hope he had offirst and most readily making himself understood by them. It isbecause, in his apprehension, for the presentment of the matter to thepeople, the whole was, so he says, "only approaching readiness andmaturity," but not yet ready and mature.

That it is possible today to do what in Fichte's time was recognizedas the only fruitful thing to do, but, at the same time, as not thenready to be done, and therefore too serious to be undertaken,--thisexpresses the whole short step in advance that has been accomplishedin Germany during the past fifty years; for you will seek in vain forthe slightest progress on the part of the German government.

Fichte himself, in the passage cited, says that this advance is comingin the near future. This "near future" proves to have been fifty yearsremoved, and I trust, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, thatyou will all consider a fifty-years' interval long enough to satisfythe requirements of the "near future."

But the men who, undeterred by all the difficulties of the task, putall their energies into this stupendous undertaking of carryingscientific knowledge and scientific habits of thought among the bodyof the people,--are they fairly open to the accusation of havingsought to incite the indigent classes to hatred of the well-to-do? Dothey not thereby really deserve the thanks and the affection of thepropertied classes, and of the bourgeoisie above all?

Whence arises the bourgeoisie's dread of the people in politicalmatters?

Look back, in memory, to the months of March, April, and May, 1848.Have you forgotten how things looked here at that time? The power ofthe police was broken; the people filled all the streets and publicplaces. And all streets, all public places and all the people in thehands of Karbe, Lindenmueller, and other reckless agitators likethem,--men without knowledge, without intelligence, without culture,thrown into prominence by the storm which stirred our political lifeto its depths. The _bourgeoisie_, scared and faint hearted, hiding intheir cellars, trembling every instant for fear of their property andtheir lives, which lay in the hands of these coarse agitators, andsaved only by the fact that these agitators were too good-natured tomake such use of their power as the bourgeoisie feared they would. The_bourgeoisie_, secretly praying for the reestablishment of the policepower and quaking with a fright which they have not yet forgotten, therecollection of which still leaves them incapable of taking up thepolitical struggle.

How came it that in a city which proudly calls itself the metropolisof intelligence, in so great a city, in the home of the most brilliantintellects,--how came it that the people here for months togethercould be at the disposal of Karbe and Lindenmueller and could tremblebefore them in fear for their life and property. Where was theintelligence of Berlin? Where were the men of science and of insight?Where were you, Gentlemen?

A whole city is never cowardly.

But these men reflected and told one another: The people do notunderstand our ways of thinking; they do not even understand ourspeech. There is a great gulf between our scientific views and theways of the multitude, between the speech of scientific discussion andthe habits of thought of the people. They would not understand us.Therefore the floor belongs to the coarsest.

So they reflected and held their peace. Now, Gentlemen, are you quitesure that a political upheaval will never recur? Are you ready toswear that you have reached the end of historical development? Or areyou willing to see your lives and property again at the mercy of aKarbe and a Lindenmueller?

If not, then your thanks are due to the men who have devotedthemselves to the work of filling up that gulf which separatesscientific thought and scientific speech from the people, and so toraze the barriers that divide the bourgeoisie and the people. Yourthanks are due these men, who, at the expense of their utmostintellectual efforts, have undertaken a work whose results willredound to the profit of each and all of you. These men you shouldentertain at the prytaneum, not put under indictment.

The place in which this address was held, therefore, can also notafford ground for exception as to its scientific character.

I have now shown you conclusively that the production is a scientificwork.

But if, contrary to all expectation, this should still be questioned,although I do not for a moment consider it possible that it should bequestioned by men as enlightened as you are, Mr. President andGentlemen of the Court; now, in such a case, I seek refuge in theprivilege which is accorded every cobbler and which you can all theless deny me, viz., to submit a question of workmanship in my trade tothe award of men expert in the trade.

In the last resort, the question as to the scientific character of agiven work is a question for the men of the trade, and therefore aquestion which may not be decided on a basis of common education andcommon culture alone, and therefore also not by a court of law. Thequestion at issue does not concern jurisprudence, with which you arenecessarily familiar, but it concerns other sciences with which youmay well be unfamiliar, although, as a matter of chance, you may, inyour private capacity, not your capacity as jurists, also beacquainted with these matters.

It is true, you may answer this question in the affirmative, yourcompetence extends that far. For in very many cases is the scientificcharacter of a given work manifest, even to the commonly instructedintelligence.

But to pass a negative opinion in the face of the expert testimony towhich I provisionally appeal as a subsidiary recourse;[55] to thatyour competence does not extend, for the nicer question, whether in agiven case the most profound researches of science may not, with aview to their readier apprehension, be presented in a facile andpopular form, whether this fact of a facile presentation may notitself mark a peculiarly high achievement of scientific endeavor, inwhich all traces of the struggle, all difficulties and all therefractoriness of the materials handled have been successfullyeliminated and the whole has in the outcome been reduced to thesimplest and clearest terms; where the result presented is ascientific work of art, which, in the words of Schiller, has risenabove the limitations of human infirmity and moves with such ease andfreedom as to give the impression that it offers but the free play ofthe auditor's own unfolding thought; to decide with confidence whetheryou have to deal with a scientific work of this class, and to decideit with that certainty and security that is required in order to passa sentence, that is something of which none but men trained in thescience are capable.

This question, therefore, I beg that the following gentlemen: PrivyCouncillor August Boeckh, Efficient Privy Councillor Johannes Schultze,formerly Director of the Ministry of Public Worship, Professor AdolfTrendelenburg, Privy Councillor and Chief Librarian Dr. Pertz, ProfessorLeopold Ranke, Professor Theodor Mommsen, Privy Councillor ProfessorHanssen, all members of the Royal Academy of Science, and as specialistscapable of judging in the matter, be constituted a subsidiary tribunalto pass on the question, whether the address in question is not in thestrict sense a scientific production.

But, if such is found to be the case, then, as I have alreadyexplained, it has nothing to do with the penal code.

I have permitted myself to go exhaustively into an exposition of this,my first ground of defense, because, for the sake of the countryitself and the dignity and liberty of science, and for the sake ofestablishing once for all a precedent which shall bar out all similarendeavors of the public prosecutor in the future, it is incumbent onme to adjure you to acquit me under Article 20 of the Constitution.

But it is not that recourse to this article is necessary to protect myperson from the penalty of the law.

For, even were it held that the present case comes within thecompetence of the penal code, the law appealed to has in no wise beenviolated, and the paragraph cited by the public prosecutor has noapplication.